Multiplayer Monster Battle Game

Menu

– Added logic to KOTH Arena to handle Draws. Was glitching the game mode out. Both Trainers will earn 100 bits and should rematch.

– The win reward has been brought down from 300 bits to 200. The losing reward has been brought down from 100 bits to 50 bits.

Abilities

– Charging abilities that require being a certain distance from the enemy in order to use will now check the distance once again after the initial charge up time is completed. If at this point the enemy monster is too close the ability will be interrupted.

This was done to prevent charging attacks like Charge and Tackle from executing from short distance which made them odd to deal with at times.

– Fixed another bug that resulted in melee abilities activating before actually being in range, resulting in your monster doing no damage and looking pretty silly.

AI

– Added logic for enemy AI to better handle queuing up abilities. This should result in an increase in difficulty.

Misc

– The Arena now has a black and white floor paint. This floor paint was designed to have customizable colors in-game. The idea is to eventually give players the ability to customize their own arenas and this is the first step towards that.

Mainly putting this out there to fix major bug. Special thanks to Dotkiwi for finding it so quickly

Gameplay

-Mana and Stamina will reset to full for both parties following a knockdown instead of only Stamina.

This was something I was trying out in the latest dev build and I feel it’s a good change for consistency. There have been a lot of buffs to melee abilities and stamina recently and if this makes mana too strong then I will balance the game through max mana values.

Bugs

-Fixed issue where stamina would not regenerate if the last move used was a dash

There are a lot of changes and some new features in this patch and with it there are going to be bugs. Some of which I’m already aware of and more to come. While this version isn’t quite as polished with the features it introduces, I felt like it was time to put something out there to let players test and fix it along the way.

Improved FPS During Battles

Some optimizations have been made to the Battle UI which has resulted in a 10-15 fps increase during battles in the Editor version. For players on lower end machines, you will hopefully notice your battles playing out much smoother.

Abilities Stop Only the Regen of the Resources They Require

Currently, using an ability will stop your passive Stamina Regen. This is now only the case if the ability you are using requires Stamina. This means that you can now use Mana only abilities to keep buying time for your Stamina to regenerate. This now gives more purpose to using long range projectile abilities that might be easily dodged, and also encourages more use of projectile abilities that take more time to charge.

It also creates a different situation for Dugo while diving since mana will passively regen for Dugo while performing stamina only abilities.

This will allow for longer back and forth battles where players can manage their stamina without having to be completely passive.

Attribute Changes

Every monster in M.EXE has 100 points that make up their total base attributes. Because of the changes I had to go through each monster and properly adjust their attribute point distribution. Monster stats have changed so have a look through all your monster forms to see all the details.

Regen Attributes Removed

Stamina Regen and Mana Regen are no longer main attributes. Mana and Stamina now also govern their respective regen stat.

Using your attribute points to upgrade mana vs mana regen felt very similar so this change makes your choice more clear. Your monster’s regen stat will still be displayed but it will scale with the respective mana or stamina attribute.

Health Attribute Nerf

Health was a bit strong and has been nerfed. Each attribute point on Health will now grant 2 health instead of 3. To make up for this the minimum amount of health has been raised from 100 to 150. This is a general buff to all the smaller/lower health monsters.

More Reliable Melee

Melee abilities have been made more reliable. There were many instances where a monster would use a melee ability too early and be out of range or simply wouldn’t get close enough to their target. This has for the most part been fixed and should result in much more consistent gameplay.

Higher Melee Movement Speed

While melee abilities are activating(winding up) your monster moves at a faster speed than normal. This speed has been increased which will allow melee abilities to be a bit more threatening. It also makes Charge and Tackle abilities much faster and more dangerous.

Tackle and Charge

The way the game handles two monsters using Charge or Tackle abilities vs each other has been changed. Now the monsters will more appropriately push each other away rather than both of them being pushed into the same direction.

Tackle and Charge Separation

Tackle is no longer the EX version of Charge. Instead they have been separated into different abilities. Charge is now only available to smaller sized monsters while Tackle is only available for the larger monsters.

Large monsters will now trade better vs smaller monsters when charging at each other. Tackle will knock down while Charge will not. Tackle will cost more stamina. Small monsters shouldn’t be trading even vs large monsters when charging at each other.

Larger Arena

The space you have available during battles has been increased and the distance that monsters start from each other has been increased as well. I wanted to give more space to maneuver, especially with the increased speed during melee windups.

Arena Modes

The different arena maps have been disabled in this build. Instead there will be only 1 Arena and in the future I will be adding a way to change the look of the Arena from within. Instead you will now switch between different modes.

The first mode is Training Arena. Training Arena is basically the Arena we are used to. You will spawn in are able to change your monster at computers as well as spawn AI to battle against. Other players can join in and you can walk around and battle as you please.

The second mode is KOTH Arena. This will be a more restricted Arena where constant battles will be taking place. When you start up a KOTH Arena you will see a view of the Arena. The UI will show a list of Trainers in queue to battle. By pressing SHIFT + SPACE you can enter or exit the queue.

If less than 2 players are in queue the game will spawn an AI Trainer and will add this AI to the queue. The AI will always be on the hardest difficulty. If no players are in the queue then 2 Trainers will be spawned and they will then battle each other. Any players present will automatically spectate the match.

The winning Trainer will remain and battle the next in the queue. The losing Trainer will go back to the queue, or in the case that the losing Trainer is an AI, they will be deleted and a new AI will be spawned.

For everyone who enjoyed the old AI Spectate map or would like to just sit back and watch some good battles, you can just start up a KOTH Arena and grab some popcorn.

***Also important to note: KOTH Arena is now the only mode that currently grants rewards to players. Players will receive 300 Bits for each win. There is nothing to spend your bits on right now but these Bits will remain on your account to be used for things in the future. How much currency you earn will likely change in the near future but I wanted to give a good incentive to test this mode out. For now even losing will grant 100 Bits as long as it’s not a surrender. This can all be easily abused and is only temporary.

Battle Camera

The battle camera has changed again. This time I’ve decided to focus on making the action as clear as possible. The camera is a bit further away in order to see more of the battle and no longer looks to monsters that have been knocked down. This helps with the larger arena size.

Animations

Terram and Mentis Additional Punch Animations:

Terram and Mentis have new punching animations to differentiate their light punches from their heavier ones. This will be most obvious with Terram who uses punch animations to launch rock projectiles. Smaller rock projectiles will use the light punch animations while the larger ones will use the heavier ones.

Abilities

Hot Meteor –

A lava projectile ability that costs 30 mana. It fires a fireball from the sky that falls down onto the opponent.

– KOTH Arena has a bug where clients have their cameras switch behind their character instead of staying on the Arena view.
– KOTH Arena allows players to switch to their character’s camera view while spectating

Since the beginning I’ve been trying to add more options to what you can do during a battle. You got your abilities, blocking, dashing, moving forward, and recharging. Most recently, countering was introduced which helps make battles more dynamic by adding a comeback risk/reward system. In general I feel like there is now enough to do during a battle.

Where I found the game lacking was in the 4 ability slot limit. Using 4 abilities feels nice, but it became a problem with introducing new abilities to the game. As I added abilities, there would be some interesting ideas that would come up, but I couldn’t justify using one of your 4 ability slots on it because it was so niche or because it didn’t match the utility of some other abilities.

My first attempt was pretty extreme. I wanted to add more abilities without having people go through more number keys. I decided to try to work with submenus. So pressing 1 would open up your first submenu of abilities that would contain 3 abilities within it. Pressing 1 again would use the first ability of that submenu. There would be 3 submenus, for a total of 9 abilities.

I thought it was a good idea but it ended up working poorly. First of all, having submenus made it so you couldn’t at a glance see what abilities you had available. Instead when you pressed 1, the submenu would pop up which would guide your eyes to it and away from the fight. Instead of instantly giving a command with a single key press, you would need to press 2 keys. If you were stuck in a submenu and realized you would rather use an ability in a different submenu, then you had to exit the current one, enter the new one and select the ability. It just completely disrupted the flow of battle.

So then came my second attempt. Even though you have 4 abilities, you don’t realistically have 4 ability options available at all times. If your monster is past a certain distance from the enemy then most melee abilities aren’t really an option. When up close, most projectiles and boosts aren’t really an option. There are already abilities like Charge that you can’t even use when in close range.

So I decided that maybe having 4 abilities available at a time was fine, but that the 4 abilities available would change depending on your monster’s distance from the enemy monster. It didn’t work out well. The flow of battle was once again disrupted. Dashing away and from close range and queuing up a projectile to use mid-air was a common tactic that could no longer be used. Using melee abilities from out of range was actually pretty useful to get close up if your monster has some good speed, and this took that away as well.

It took a lot of time to try these ideas out, but I’m glad I explored them. In the end I decided that the way abilities work and feel is already in a good place and so I need to try to maintain that. So the simplest and most obvious approach that I was trying to avoid ended up being the right choice. In the next patch, your monster will simply have 5 abilities available rather than 4.

Because I wanted to avoid the use of another number key I made Q the key to use for the fifth ability which ended up feeling the most comfortable. While it might seem out of place not making it a number key, there were always plans to add in a special ability that would use all 3 bars of EX meter by pressing F. I will leave the 5 key as an option as well. The Xbox gamepad controls are also being changed a bit to allow for this expansion in ability options.

After a lot of testing, I think 5 abilities really adds enough variety in abilities to the game. You really feel the luxury of being able to take an extra tool into battle after already having most of what you feel you needed. This will add a lot more variety as players will find themselves with extra options and hopefully more strategies and interesting new abilities will emerge.

A bug was fixed that prevented monsters from regening their health after entering the next level in the Wilds. This resulted in a very difficult experience in the Wilds, especially at lower levels. Sorry for that, it took me a while to notice…

Fixed a bug where the game would freeze after losing in the Wilds. You would spawn back at the PlayerHub unable to move. It was a pretty annoying bug and I’m sorry it took this long to fix it.

2v2 Rework into 2v2 Tag

2v2 Tag will be replacing the current 2v2 mode because the game is balanced around 1v1 combat and there were a lot of broken things with 4 monsters in the arena at once. This will also make it much more possible for a single monster to take on 2 enemy opponents of the same level.

The command for switching targets will now tag your teammate back in instead. If your teammate is an AI then you can use this command to tag yourself back in.

Here you can see 2v2 Tag in action:

I want 2v2 battles and coop to be a big part of the game so that it’s more than just a fun wacky mode that the current 2v2 system is. I want it to be a competitive and strategic mode and I would like to offer coop experiences in PvE. This is one big step towards that.

I’ve tried cleaning it up as best as I could but I’m sure there will still be an issue or two with 2v2 Tag so please let me know what you experience so I can try to fix it as soon as possible.

In the Red Arena you will find an AI Trainer standing around. This AI will spawn with a random monster when you enter the map. You can add that AI Trainer to your party to try out 2v2 battles vs 2 AI. I will figure out how to best make this option available in the future.

Settings and Stability

The game has had some problems with people getting stuck in menus and problems with video settings not saving properly after setting them. I have fixed a few bugs that were causing this, but it was also caused because the game fails to detect the ideal resolution for people’s monitors. Due to sometimes giving players higher resolutions than their monitors support, the UI would bug out in FullScreen and Borderless modes.

To fix this, I have made the default settings set the resolution to 1280×720. The default screen mode will also be Windowed rather than Borderless. And to help some players on lower end machines, the default resolution quality setting will be set to 80 rather than 100.

In order for existing players to experience these new default settings you will have to delete your current SettingsSaveSlot.sav file which is located in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\m_4_14\Saved\SaveGames

It’s better for new players to get low settings at the start and be able to set their settings higher than it is for players to have high settings at the start and sometimes be unable to set them lower due to graphics issues. This should at least help players on lower end machines a little bit.

Graphics settings should also properly save after closing the settings menu now. Also you can press the ESC key again to close the escape menu.

These changes to settings have the potential to mess some stuff up. I haven’t noticed anything in my tests but I’ll be keeping a close eye on things and will try to patch any problems as quickly as possible

Arena Auto Level Removed

Monsters will no longer auto level to 10 in the Arena. Instead monsters below level 10 won’t be available to use in the Arena, and you will need a level 10 monster to even go through the Arena Portal.

Having monsters auto level created a lot of problems, such as stat points carrying over outside of the Arena resulting in low level monsters with all 10 stat points. It also made leveling your monster seem a bit pointless.

The main issue that I had before having monsters auto level to 10 in the Arena, was that new players would go straight into the Arena and unknowingly put up their level 1 monsters vs other player’s level 10 monsters. Needless to say, this wasn’t very fun for them. With Auto Level, new players would come in and be a bit overwhelmed in the Arena with everything available. Then they would leave the Arena and see everything they had available to them be taken away. Now new players won’t be able to enter the Arena and it will be clear to them that they should go into the Wilds and learn the game a bit first as they level their monsters up to 10. This should result in a better initial experience in the Arena.

Abilities

Draining Bite – A melee bite ability that does 10 damage and heals for 15. Even though the attack can be blocked, the healing will still take place.

EX Draining Bite(Vampiric Bite) – Works the same as Draining Bite but will heal for 25.

Draining Bite is a bite ability that is only available to monsters with fangs. Currently only Sooth Saber and Terram can use it

Ice Wall – A wall obstacle ability. It has 15 health rather than 25 health like Rock Wall. The up side is that for every melee strike an opponent does to the Ice Wall, they gain a Chill stack which will bring them closer to being frozen(FYI: It takes 5 Chill stacks to become frozen).

EX Ice Wall(Ice Fort) – Works like Rock Fort, but again less health and applies Chill stacks to opponents using melee abilities. It spawns three walls in front of your monster. These walls unlike the standard Ice Wall will block heavy projectiles.